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Friends United Meeting |
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May 2001
News from Friends United Meeting
The Changing Face of FUM
By Retha McCutchen
The Changing Face of FUM is the theme of the 2001 Friends United
Meeting Sunday. While such changes are largely positive, they are only
positive when understood. The Board held an exciting visioning retreat
in February 2000. New paradigms of ministry defined three focus:
- Missions
- Communicating our Christian faith
- Relationships with/among North American Yearly Meetings.
In June 2000 the General Board made difficult programmatic decisions to insure FUM would be fiscally sound and set the stage for new paradigms. Each FUM department required adjustment--missions, Quaker Life, Friends United Press, Quaker Hill Bookstore, and general office.
Faces changed. Central office staff positions of one Director (executive), business manager, receptionist, shipping clerk and development officer were eliminated or put "on hold" for the balance of 2000 and possibly 2001. Programs receiving subsidy from the general fund were required to reduce or eliminate subsidy through the framework of a planning process that encourages responsible and sustainable programs. These changes affected all FUM departments and programs
It is a pleasure to report successful results:
- February year-to-date financial reports show the 2001 budget being met.
- Ben Richmond assumed the position of Director of North American Ministries
in March.
- Mission field and project staff assisted in increasing giving levels
to their ministries.
- Quaker Life is increasing income through new subscriptions and
advertising.
- Quaker Hill Bookstore is eliminating deficit spending through controlled
inventory.
- Friends United Press has five new books in publishing process.
What does our budget look like?
The total budget for all of FUM's activities in 2000 was $2,747,779. About
45% of this, $1,234,188, was for FUM's general operating budget. This
funded the work of Friends United Press, Quaker Hill Bookstore, Quaker
Life, and the central office staff. Another 12%, $348,262, funded
our field staff in their work. The 42% balance, $1,165,329, was restricted
by donors to fund FUM's mission work. The central office staff's share
of the total budget was $546,260, representing less than 20% of the total
budget for the year.
The income to cover this $546,260 came from several sources. Approximately 15% comes from rent income, interest, and investments. The balance comes from generous unrestricted (i.e. undesignated) contributions to FUM's general fund from yearly meetings, monthly meetings and individuals.
How are field staff funded?
We currently use a two-pronged approach.
- Prior to going to the field, a ministry budget is prepared jointly between
said field staff and FUM/World Missions. This budget includes all overseas
ministry and living expense--salary benefits, car, maintenance, travel,
etc. These funds are raised through cooperative effort of the field staff
and FUM/WM staff to solicit designated contributions.
- The costs for North American support are contained within the FUM general
budget and funded through undesignated general fund contributions. These
costs include accounting, receipt and disbursement of funds, administrative
support, consultation, printing and mailing, scheduling of travel and
deputation, etc. Obviously, without this work in Richmond, the field staff
would be unable to carry out their ministry in the field.
Example: Field Staff Ministry budget (field) $ 65,000
Support budget (home) 15,000
Project funds 100,000
Total 2000 expenditure $185,000
In this example, $65,000 is raised through designated funds for the ministry budget, $100,000 designated for projects, and $15,000 provided through the FUM general fund.
Are General Board, staff or Missions Committee fully satisfied with this approach for funding field staff? NO! FUM is working to change the current situation, so that we can reduce the fundraising expectations of field staff. The General Board designated a subcommittee consisting of Don Garner (INYM), Eden Grace (NEYM), Brent McKinney (NCYM) and Retha McCutchen (staff) to study possible solutions and report back to the Board. Yet another changing face for FUM!
The income to cover the $1,165,329 restricted spending in 2000 came from designated contributions. These contributions are always credited to the account designated. FUM spends designated funds exactly as noted. For example, funds noted "Lugulu Hospital" are sent to the hospital general fund (project funds) and those noted "Downing/Armstrong" go toward the field staff ministry budget.
This is where FUM is today.
General Board and staff are pleased with progress made. Yet more progress
is required. FUM is being led to a better place, in part because we've
taken on such difficult issues and dealt with them as a staff and a Board.
This is a good time to support FUM!
Staff is daily speaking aloud the ways we see GodŐs hand and blessing
on FUM--and they are numerous. Thanks be to God! And thanks to each one
of you for praying and believing in Friends United Meeting.
Chicago Fellowship of Friends
By Gloria Riley
The Chicago Fellowship of Friends celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Cabrini-Green ministry of pastors, Steve and Marlene Pedigo on February 3, 2001. Cabrini-Green is an urban community in the center of Chicago where our meetinghouse sits.
The day-long event held at the meetinghouse began with the first meeting of our newly formed Advisory Board, consisting of members from Western, Indiana, Iowa, North Carolina and Philadelphia Yearly Meetings. Their charge is to assist the Chicago Fellowship of Friends in communicating its vision among Friends, and to help garner support for the meeting's ministries. The Open House for the After-School Program began at 1 p.m. Parents from the community were invited to see the facilities and register their children.
Then at 3 p.m. a Praise and Worship Service was held in our newly renovated worship room. This was a time of spiritual jubilation shared by all. The worship message, "Let the work I have done speak for me," was delivered by keynote speaker Reverend Dr. Walter Johnson of Wayman AME Church. He challenged listeners to follow God's call no matter how frightening or difficult it might seem. Both Friends and non-friends attended.
Immediately following the Praise and Worship Service, a banquet was held at a nearby conference center. Guest speaker Kara Newell of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting took us down memory lane and described how the Pedigos used simple God-given talents to follow His call.
The guest speakers summed up the movement of this ministry: God challenged the Pedigos to share the fruits of the spirit--love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, long-suffering--and they accepted the call and were not afraid. And God, through the Pedigos and the Chicago Fellowship of Friends, touched the hearts of many. Nearly 300 of those hearts attended and many were moved to speak spontaneously to relate how God has touched them and their meetings through the Pedigos' ministry.
Planned by members of the Chicago Fellowship of Friends and the Alumni Group, consisting of individuals who were part of the earlier youth ministry and have gone on to lead productive Christian lives, the results were a blessing to all in attendance.
Friends United Sunday to Celebrate Changes
"The Changing Face of FUM," the theme for Friends United Sunday, is set for June 3. FUM Sunday is your opportunity to learn the latest about our shared ministries. Intentional change began at the February 2000 General Board retreat when the board looked at what only FUM can do and named three priorities: missions, communicating our Christian faith, and coordinating cooperative efforts of North American yearly meetings.
With new staff leadership in four departments, a balanced budget, a new and reliable accounting system, a more interactive web site, new staff, and volunteers applying for the mission field, Friends United Meeting is well positioned for our shared ministries in North America and abroad.
A promotional poster, bulletin insert, brochures, and other informational materials will be available for your meeting's use on Friends United Sunday. In addition, Friends United Meeting staff and board members will be available as speakers.
Kenya Work Team
By Laura Krughoff
It is evening by the time I reach Lugulu Friends Mission Hospital after the six hour drive from Nairobi. The truck tires are muffled by the fine dust of the dirt road leading up to the hospital, a cluster of low cement buildings and tin roofs high up on a Kenyan hillside. The truck door slams solidly, and the smell of the air overwhelms me. It's the same smell that strikes you the moment you step off the plane at the airport, sharp with charcoal smoke and the sweet smell of sweat from human bodies and animals. Except here it is cleaner and sweeter, rounded out by the tang of the Eucalyptus trees stretching up and over the hospital. A thumb nail of a yellow moon is climbing, and a few brilliant, singular stars shine out against the deepening blue of the sky. For me the air is electric, the dust on my sandals charged. It is my first night in East Africa.
It is morning when I pass through the gate into the heart of Friends Lugulu Hospital for the first time. Inside, behind the gate, the hospital is teeming. The buildings seem to overflow. Women sit out on the verandas, babies at the breast, or relax in the shade braiding each other's hair, or lean on windowsills chatting. Men sit in the grass, legs outstretched, resting in the sun. And there are children everywhere, clinging to the skirts of their mothers or playing in the dust of the flower gardens beneath the windows.
I am on a tour of the hospital with the mission physicians--Ray Downing, a slim-fingered man, bespeck-led and blinking, and Jan Armstrong, long-haired and smiling. We breeze through the facility, men's ward on the left, a brick and stone annex still under construction, intended to provide six private rooms for paying patients. Up a small hill and past the maternity ward, then into a breezeway, pediatrics on the left, and the women's ward on the right. We bypass the operating theater and the offices. A second operating room under construction is little more than cool, camp cement and cinder block. In front are the outpatient clinic and the women and children's health center.
Jan chats about the patients and diagnoses as we walk toward the hospital's garden plot, milk barn, and chicken coop. We talk about malaria and malnutrition, TB, AIDS, and pre-natal complications. Ray tells me about the logistics of running a mission hospital when there's only running water thirty percent of the time, when the power goes out during surgery and he has to finish by flashlight, when pharmaceuticals are scarce, and non-existent at other area health centers. We talk about overcrowding, multiple patients in one bed, and many discharged patients still living within the hospital compound waiting for someone to come and pay their bill.
Our work was done, for the most part, inside the hospital gate. In the hot sun, some sawed lumber, pounded nails, and laid brick for the new wing. We spent two days trying to make high-powered, battery operated saws bite through green and irregular lumber. After charging all night, they ground to a halt after two passes through a piece of wood. A sturdy hand saw and a strong shoulder proved more efficient for working the local lumber. The power tools taught us another lesson. Drs. Armstrong and Downing both talked at length about donated equipment or supplies often rendered useless in African hospitals because they don't run on the Kenyan power grid, or need high levels of water pressure. When they break, the American or European made parts are unavailable in Kenya. These are things we would not have known. We learned that we must listen, we must ask, we must send and receive messages in order to know what a Kenyan hospital needs.
Construction for the new wing of private rooms at Friends Lugulu Hospital was underway when we arrived. The foundation had been laid, and the exterior walls were almost finished. The whole project will be completed in the next few months. Our work team of twelve people from the Midwest did not drop from the sky like magic and provide Lugulu Hospital with something the Kenyans were incapable of accomplishing themselves. We certainly helped. The interior walls went up and the roof went on the new wing. Much painting was done, leaving a staff house and large laundry building looking bright and fresh and new. We labored long hours side by side with the Kenyan volunteers for seven days, and a great deal of work was accomplished, but the project began without us, and it will be completed without us. What we did do was help. This, perhaps, is not the way we Americans typically think about mission projects.
"But we have resources, tools, money, know-how," we say. "Let us come and do it, teach it, give it, whatever it is that you need." And it is a noble desire, to give of what we have. It comes out of love and compassion, a desire to share the wealth with which we have been blessed. But we did not do anything that could not have been done by someone else. In fact, we could have simply donated the thousands of dollars our work team spent on the airfare to Lugulu, and perhaps a much bigger and better building could have been built. Our modern idea of mission work developed from the early church tradition of sending a messenger from one church to another, sending an individual between distant and scattered outposts of Christianity to deliver and receive encouragement and messages. The messenger's job was both to send and to receive. This is why it was important for us to go to Lugulu. We went with a message of love, support and encouragement from the United States, but even more importantly we returned home with our photographs, memories, and stories--with the message of Lugulu.
I cannot speak for the entire team when it comes to the more personal lessons we learned, the more personal things we saw. For me, at Lugulu, I saw death, and yet, also witnessed tremendous hope.
A member of our work team was walking down the road toward the town of Lugulu when he witnessed a father bringing his child to the hospital. The boy was limp and lifeless in his father's arms, and the man ran full tilt toward the hospital. He ran until he was exhausted and panting, until he had to slow to a walk. And he walked until he had regained his breath, then he ran again, holding his son in his arms. We don't know how far he had traveled this way, but he ran with desperate hope toward Friend's Lugulu Hospital, knowing that it was the only place for miles around where his child could get the care necessary to live. We don't know what happened to that boy, but we know his father ran with hope. That is why we traveled to Lugulu, Kenya. We have returned with this message of hope.
Copyright (c) 2001 Friends United Meeting
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